Substance Misuse

Amid the current opioid crisis, high-profile events of mass violence and suicide, mental health parity implementation, and continued efforts to expand Medicaid for childless adults, never has behavioral health featured so prominently on policy agendas. Industry experts are scrambling for solutions, including a serious proposal to reintroduce the “asylum” as described in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in January of this year. The JAMA article argued for the expansion of institutionalized settings for people with mental illness who cannot live alone, cannot care for themselves, or are a danger to themselves and others. Surely the solution to tackling the incredibly complex problem of mental illness and substance misuse has to involve a broader dialogue than whether or…